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Mimi Productions finishes Marathon with 66 videos

By Ruth L Ratny
Nov 12, 2012

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Mimi Productions turned out a whopping total of 66 videos promoting six brands of Nestle Regional Spring Waters – the world’s leading mineral water company — shot during the Xport Fitness Rock & Roll Half Marathon last July 22, a charity race of 20,000 running through the streets of downtown Chicago.

Culver City based Threshold Interactive hired producer/editor Michelle De Long, partner with David J. Miller in Mimi Productions and its viralfilmvideo.com division, for the project. De Long’s lengthy experience in documentary and news helped achieve the high quality cinematic and documentary look the agency wanted with a small crew.

The 60-second master videos focused on the importance of proper hydration and training for runners and span each of the six Nestle Regional Spring Water brands: Ice Mountain, Poland Spring, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ozarka and Zephyrhills.

“We started in July and delivered all 66 versions in October,” says De Long, who edited the videos over a harried six-week period.

“The project consisted of eight master videos, each telling a different story. Each one also required 11 versions for each Nestle brand by changing a label or adding a tag. Three of the masters had alternative endings for future release.”

The first day of the two-day shoot captured training runs with elite long distance runner Josh Cox and the second day was the 13.1 mile race capture and inspirational personal stories told by the runners. The DPs used Canon DSLR 5Ds mounted on a glidecam and a handheld brace that enabled them to jog alongside the runners.

“Working with L.A.’s Threshold and Nestle has given us the latitude to push our production values that much higher, to be where we want to be in terms of creative, cinematography and storytelling,” says De Long, who started Mimi Productions in 2005 after 15 years as an editor at NBC5.

Current corporate video clients include RBS Citizens Bank (locally Charter One bank) and UK-headquartered DIAGEO, the world’s largest wine, beer and spirits conglomerate, with US headquarters in Plainfield.

“We’ve been very busy this summer filming for these and other clients throughout the Midwest and parts of the East Coast,” says De Long.